


The One Who Got Left Behind

by flibbertygigget



Series: The Other 51 [23]
Category: In the Heights - Miranda, Rent - Larson
Genre: Angst, Benny and Benny are the same person, Character Death (Discussed), Gen, HIV/AIDS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6898516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benny knows how to deal with loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Who Got Left Behind

Benny knows how to deal with loss.

A long time ago, his ambition had kept him from California and the woman that he loved. "Just a little more time," he told Nina Rosario. "Just a little more time, and I'll have enough money to come to you." Eventually she became tired of waiting and found another man.

After that, he had become even more consumed by his ambition.He would show her. He would become the richest man in Washington Heights, just you wait, and then she would love him again. He stayed there, scraping together every penny he could, patiently waiting for his opportunity. The barrio shifted around him, changing until there wasn't a familiar face to be seen, but he was too focussed on his goal to notice that he was being left behind. When he looked up, everyone was already gone.

Meeting Mark was a revelation, and even now he can't bring himself to quash that tiny, guilty hint of relief that it the others, not Mark, who had died. Mark was- Mark was everything he wasn't, everything he had never wanted to be but always secretly envied in others. Mark was creative, glorious, determined to carve his name into the world without giving into it. And he was hopelessly, unbearably nieve.

Yes, Benny was a sell-out, a hack who would give away his mind and body without remorse or hesitation, but he was also the one with a roof over his head and good food in his stomach. He had tried to convince Mark that it was necessary to give in to the world sometimes, but Mark ignored him, convinced that he could somehow live on art alone.

And now, well, it's no accident that Mark is once again depending on him for charity, though this time it's for a different reason.

"Mark, let me in," Benny begs.

"Fuck off!" Benny sighs and takes out his key ring, quickly finding the key that opens Mark's bedroom door.

"I'm coming in!" He expects Mark to punch him when he walks through the door, almost welcomes it, but instead Mark lies on the bed in a puddle of piss and liquor. Benny sighs and presses the plate into his hands. "Here. Eat."

"Fuck  _off_." Benny notices a paper balled in Mark's hand.

"What's that?" he says. Mark throws it at him, and when Benny opens it up all he can feel is dull shock.

Joan is dead. The last of Mark's group of bohemians, the only one to be even a little bit stable, the one who had made it out, was dead. Apparently the saying "don't stick your dick in crazy" applied even when you don't have a dick. With the way Maureen had slept around, Joan had never had a chance.

"God," Benny says, "I'm so sorry." Mark shakes his head.

"I guess you were right," he said. "We should have went along with you. We were all fucked."

"But not you," Benny says. He bites back any comment about how Mark was smarter than the others. It wasn't the time for truth. "You're still alive." Mark laughs bitterly.

"Not me?" he says. "Are you crazy?" He rolls up his sleeve, and Benny wants to be sick. He wants to die, because he can't do this anymore, he can't lose his last link to the human race.

"No," he says. "No, no, no, you don't have- You're not sick. You're not."

"It's the last thing Maureen ever gave me," Mark says. "I tried to keep it a secret, to keep it at bay, but... I can't do it anymore. I'm dying, Benny, and I'm not going to get any better." He smiles. "I'll get to see them again."

"There are new treatments, experimental medicines. I have a friend in the FDA, he can-"

"Don't you get it? I don't care!" Mark is laughing hysterically. "I don't care, not anymore! Everyone's dead, everyone that matters is dead except for me. I want to die, Benny. I've wanted to die for a long time, and now-" He touches the damned spot with something approaching reverence. "And now I can. I can be with my friends again."

Benny wants to scream at Mark, to ask him if  _Benny_ matters at all to him, or if he is just a means to an ends in the creative genius's mind, but he doesn't. He can't. He's not stupid, he knows that Mark stopped caring the moment he married his wife, the moment he shattered every principle that Mark had. He'd been a fool to shink that supporting Mark, giving him everything he had and more and asking for  _nothing_ but the rent, would be enough to get him a shred of friendship in return.

Benny knows this scene, the one where he's left behind, left alone once again. All he has left to do is play his part.

"I'll cover you," he says. "No matter what it takes, I'll- I'll be here."

"You've always been on my side," Mark says. "I'm sorry, I've- I understand it now. There are things that make you desperate enough to sell out." It isn't much of an apology, but it's enough.

Benny lost Nina once because he fell behind, he won't lose Mark as well. He will stay with him until the very end.


End file.
